Martha Cooper Talks 'Martha: A Picture Story' & NYC Graffiti Culture

(CBS Local)-- Legendary photographer Martha Cooper first got her hands on a camera when she was in nursery school.

Her father had a camera store and she always used to go on camera runs with him. The two would travel around Baltimore taking pictures. Cooper ended up becoming a household name in the Big Apple and around the world for her photos capturing images of graffiti. Her story is told in a new documentary from Selina Miles called "Martha: A Picture Story." Miles and Cooper met a few years ago in Tahiti.

"Tahiti is where the germ of this documentary started," said Cooper in an interview with CBS Local. "You wouldn't think that Tahiti would be a place where anyone would want graffiti. There was a graffiti festival for four or five years and even the tourist committee was supporting it. When I was photographing graffiti in New York City, I never imaged I would go any further than New York."

Cooper worked as a photographer for the New York Post during the 1970s. At first Cooper thought the graffiti movement was only indicative of the times, but she was proven wrong.

"It seemed as it was a product of the times. New York was going bankrupt and there were vast areas with vacant lots," said Cooper. "There were holes in the fences of subway yards and many things that allowed graffiti to happen in New York. I thought that no other country would be able to put this together in the same way and I was wrong."

While Cooper didn't initially think graffiti was visually appealing, she was intrigued by the people creating the art on the streets of New York.

"What made it appealing to me was meeting a young boy who explained to me that he was writing his name," said Cooper. "After I understood that kids were writing their nicknames and that it wasn't just random vandalism, it was precisely timed vandalism. I became fascinated with it because they knew what was going on, but pretty much nobody else did."